Readers share views on insurance, Donald Trump, education
Insurance overload
After we purchase the necessary auto insurance, home insurance and medical insurance, are we insurance poor? How about long-term care insurance, dental insurance, credit insurance and catastrophic insurance.
Add it all up and see whether you can afford groceries, gas for your car and an evening at the movies. Have we become insurance poor?
Steve Katz
Leawood
Trump as president
I have seen enough of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to know that he is not a victim of the news media, the political machine or anything but himself. The reason I will never vote for him has less to do with his policies (if indeed he has any) than his character, or lack thereof.
Ernest Hemingway said, “Courage is grace under pressure.” America needs a leader who is courageous, civil and gracious — a person who represents America’s better self, not its most pompous and outrageous.
Trump’s personal conduct represents the polar opposite of courage, civility and grace. Twitter wars, name-calling and braggadocio are the behaviors of eighth-graders.
They are preposterously beneath the dignity of the office of president. The volatile and fragile world today requires the president of the United States to be the adult in the room, not the loudest bully.
Duane Daugherty
Roeland Park
Teaching youth
Saturday provided valuable insight into the American political process for my teenage daughter and her friends after they became part of the protest in opposition to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (3-13, A1, “Protests disrupt Trump rally in KC”).
I am proud they remained peaceful demonstrators who kept their heads up and didn’t respond to agitators. They simply held their signs and repeated positive statements about their platform: “Build bridges, not walls” and “United we stand, divided we fall.”
The media portrayed the opposition to Trump as a mob.
Racial slurs hurled from the Trump side were by no means peaceful. A woman was inches from my daughter’s face, yelling at her how sad it was that her mother teaches her to hate.
The woman’s anger was then directed toward me, and I assured her we were standing up to hatred.
Seeing the color of their skin, myriad people called the teens uneducated, told them to “go back to Mexico” to “build the wall” that will keep them where they belong and told them to “be thankful for the welfare money that fills their plates,” while smiling to our faces.
While racism continues to rear its evil head, it is imperative that we practice tolerance while advocating equality.
Andrea Madrigal
Kansas City, Kan.
School lotteries
So one has to gamble by hoping to win a lottery drawing to enroll her child in a “good” school in Kansas City (3-14, A1, “In charter school lotteries, KC families play emotional game”)?
What has happened to universal education?
Why would a family moving to this area take a chance when it could move elsewhere in the metropolitan area?
A splintered approach to improve the education system benefiting the winners leaves many with no choice except to pay tuition at a private school, attend another not-so-good school or move out of the district.
The implications for Kansas City are clear. People encounter problems selling their homes, and the city loses tax revenue.
Sol Koenigsberg
Overland Park
Brownback’s logic
The good news is that the Kansas Supreme Court has ordered the Legislature to fix its school-funding mess. The bad news is that the Kansas Legislature has been ordered to again try to fix its school-funding mess.
That combined with the lack of tax revenue created by Gov. Sam Brownback’s grab-bag giveaway to 330,000 Kansas businesses means that once again the less fortunate 90 percent of us are in for another huge tax increase. The money has to come from somewhere, and it’s from our pockets, my friends.
Brownback will never admit his policy mistake and roll back the tax breaks. He is too proud and too stubborn to admit that he was wrong.
And in his mind, he is just following the teachings of his Lord and savior Jesus Christ who was, after all, well-known for taking from the poor in order to feed the rich.
Scott Roby
Lenexa
This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers share views on insurance, Donald Trump, education."